Blossom
by fictionalcandie
Summary: Jasmine grew in his backyard. Oneshot.


**Disclaimer:** Characters etc. all the property of JKR and her minions. Lack of sue-age (sewage?) is appreciated.

**Author's Notes:** Written for a friend's birthday. If I ask you to review, will that make you more likely to? Hehe.

**o.o.o.o**

Jasmine grew in his backyard. Sirius didn't like it, because Bellatrix always wore it -- until she turned seventeen and switched to the far more appropriate belladonna. Remus didn't like it because it made his nose itch. Peter had no opinion, but then he never did. Lily didn't know, and he was fine with keeping it that way -- if she knew she'd probably stop wearing it, herself.

Jasmine grew in his backyard. It was tangled in the fence, all up the posts and over the arbor his father had put in for his mother's birthday one year. It bloomed constantly, because the area was magic, like his whole life. He left his window open on summer nights, so the smell would drift in as he slept, and he could dream it was Lily enveloping him with her delicate scent.

Jasmine grew in his backyard. He missed it when he was at Hogwarts, because there the only place he could smell it was when Lily would forget herself and pass too close to him in the hallways; she would brush against him every now and then, the back of her fingers on his hip, or his thigh as he got taller and she didn't. She smiled at him once when he stood up to a Ravenclaw jerk for the shyest of her friends; all he could see was the dimple on her left cheek and emerald green, green, green, jasmine blossoms and sunbeams in her hair.

Jasmine grew in his backyard. The first night that he truly never missed it was the first night he spent beside Lily, completely alone together. Of course they did nothing that night but sleep -- well, Lily slept, and he watched her. She'd had a vicious nightmare, because that was apparently how new environments affected her, and he hadn't the heart to offer her anything but his arms to lay in. It had worked magic sending her right off to dreamland, she said the next morning, because it was he that had held her. When she smiled, though, he'd smelled jasmine again. And she'd smiled all night.

Jasmine grew in his backyard. She planted it for him secretly the day before they were married, as a wedding present. She knew, couldn't help noticing, that he was a little obsessed with it. When she let him go to the store, it was the shampoo he always bought her, the lotion he always suggested when she was going to go shopping, in every single bunch of flowers he'd ever given her, of which there were many. He'd even snuck some into her wedding bouquet of lilies and orange blossoms, but she hadn't noticed until she'd got to the altar and seen his nostrils flare just slightly as he smiled, inhaling as he always did when she got close enough to him.

Jasmine grew in his backyard. The Dark Lord had crushed it when that madman had come tromping through, the overpowering rush of the smell hitting his nose like a klaxon alarm, and that was when he knew. It was his first clue and his only warning. He called out to his wife, told her to take their son and go, hoped they would make it out. The door opened, the back door, the one that was triple-locked, by Dumbledore, the one no-one could open. A dark robed figure entered, but he was only conscious of the fragrant flowers in the night air, the scent of his speedy death coming for him. It was the last thing he knew.

Jasmine grew in his backyard.

Jasmine grew on his grave. No-one had planted it there -- Remus had thought about it, but by then he hadn't the energy, and Sirius _would_ have, except he was sitting in Azkaban steadily losing his heart -- it had simply appeared one day out of the blue, fully grown. It didn't wilt and it never truly flowered, stuck always in the perfect half stage of buds about to bloom. There were hundreds of them; by the third day of their appearance, it had taken over his gravestone, obscuring the _Loving Father, Beloved Husband_ that would rest there for eternity. By the seventh, it had taken over Lily's as well.

Jasmine grew on his grave. Sometimes, when the morning was particularly misty and the day overcast, the cloudy sky sitting low upon the Earth, the plants seemed almost to form two people. The bodies of a man and woman, resting side-by-side for eternity, slumbering together until time had mercy upon their souls and stopped itself.

Jasmine grew on their graves, but no-one saw it.

And Jasmine grew on their graves.

Jasmine would grow in his backyard, Harry decided, when he got himself a house. His wife asked him why. He couldn't tell her, because he didn't really know.

But Jasmine would grow in his backyard.


End file.
